Compositeurs Classiques

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Solo instrumental

Dos Apunts for piano (1920)

Dances from Don Quixote for piano (1947)

3 Impromptus for piano (1950)

Capriccio for solo flute (1949)

Fantasia for guitar (1957)

Chaconne for solo violin (1959)

Also, many arrangements of Zarzuela material; incidental music for stage,
television and film, some including electronic music; some independent
electronic compositions including ‘Lament on the Death of a Bullfighter’ after Lorca.

Biography:

Gerhard was born Robert Gerhard Ottenwaelder; his father was German-Swiss and
his mother Alsatian, but he identified closely with the national traditions of
Catalonia where he was born, balancing this against a profoundly international
outlook. He studied piano with Granados and composition with Pedrell. After
Pedrell’s death he sought to study with Falla, but was rebuffed - instead he
became a pupil of Schoenberg in Vienna and Berlin. Returning to Barcelona in
the late 1920s he campaigned for contemporary music and was principally responsible for organizing the 1936 ISCM Festival in
Barcelona, where Berg’s Violin Concerto was premiered. He also invitedSchoenberg to Barcelona, and it was while staying with Gerhard and his wife
that Schoenberg composed the bulk of ‘Moses und Aron’.

During the Spanish Civil War Gerhard was identified with the Republican
Government, of which his brother was a member. Shortly before the fall of
Barcelona to Franco’s troops in 1939 he fled to Paris and then to England,
where he was able to settle in Cambridge. He held no post at the University,
however. During and after the war he supported himself principally by ballet,
theatre and radio work, arranging and a little private teaching. From the early
1950s he began to experiment with electronic music. The successful premiere
of the First Symphony at the 1955 ISCM Festival in
Baden-Baden launched a late international celebrity; Gerhard was encouraged by
William Glock, who became Controller of BBC Music, so in the last decade of his
life Gerhard enjoyed many performances and critical acclaim while his music
became steadily more radical.